Thursday, August 21, 2014

There are a number of reasons why websites suffer downtime. The server may be experiencing systems overload, hardware malfunctions or data center issues. It may be DNS-related like the DNS address may have been wrongly encoded or the domain name has already expired. The outage may be due to scheduled maintenance brought about by a recent web redesign or database migration. An incorrect coding parameter or a malicious attack from hackers may also be the primary causes for it to go down. Regardless of its source, the problem should be promptly addressed as it can greatly impact the business quite negatively.

What Is The Impact Of Website Downtime To Businesses

Look through some of the negative effects of having a down website. Understand the importance of uptimes to the success of your digital marketing campaign.

1. Reduced search engine rankings. If your site is always inaccessible to the users, that’s a big indicator to the search engine giant that there is something wrong with it thus Google will forward its searchers to another resource. There’s nothing to worry about if it only occurs for a day or if it is something temporary. It is a totally different story if the issue is recurring or if it happens frequently. Not only does it influence your page and SERP ranks, the bots will rate you negatively as well.

2. Bad UX (user experience). No matter how great the content and how neat the design is, no matter how attractive the promotions you offer, the bottom line is that it is still inaccessible or loads very slowly which makes the entire digital marketing effort useless. Why would the users stay and stick to your page when there are thousands out there who can service them faster and better?

3. Negative reputation and credibility on the brand. A slow or non-functioning site can be associated to how your brand performs in the real world. It can turn off not just your targeted audience, but possible investors as well.

4. Lost profits. Considering that this is your platform to communicate with your audience, every second that passes by equates to missed opportunities from potential customers. To cite an example, suppose you have an e-commerce website. Your products are ahead against your competitors, so as your pricing. How do you think your customers would react if during the middle of their shopping experience or when they are about to check their shopping cart out, the webpage suddenly shows an error code?